48: Minho wasn't the first.

There were many things Minho considered a mystery in their shared apartment in the modern world.

The ease of making yourself a meal with the appliances in the kitchen was unprecedented, yet Jisung still reached for the phone to order whenever he was hungry. He would often whine and groan when Minho gently pried the item from his hand. Jisung still ate the food Minho made with a smile on his face.

He did not like the way the walls were built thin enough that sometimes during their lovemaking, Minho had to kiss Jisung to muffle the sounds he made, lest it disturb the neighbours. He could hear music being played in the evenings, not loud enough to truly bother him, but enough that Jisung would hum and mouth the words without noticing.

He did not understand the number of useless things Jisung collected to their home, ranging from broken machines that ‘looked cool’ to unread books Jisung was certain he would read one day so they could not give them away just yet. Perhaps it was the availability of them.

He was mystified over the system of electricity, how clicking a switch on one side of the room would light up the lamp on the other side. How the fridge kept their food cold. How Jisung's  phone would become alive and die with the help of it.

Jisung tried to explain it to him, once. He spoke about electromagnetism and charged particles, and while Minho could barely understand half of it, he got to enjoy the way Jisung's eyes lit up like the lamps in the room, sudden and bright and his hands circled the air in the rhythm of the explanation, weaving an incomprehensible picture for Minho to enjoy.

It sounded like a form of spiritual energy to him. Jisung decided to tell him it was not.

Their bedroom, as the place that held most of Jisung's  personal possessions, was the den of mystery to Minho.

“Don’t touch that!” Jisung told him more often than not, and Minho would pull his hand from the object he had been about to inspect.

Electricity was dangerous, he’d learned. Small things in the house could hurt him, should he touch them in the wrong manner. He had gotten to know of Jisung's bad habit of leaving half-built electric machines lying around.

He did not want to restrict Jisung's brilliance, but he softly chastised him for things that seemed quite obvious in their danger. Fire risks and such. Jisung often joked about his carefulness, but still always quietly made the machines harmless and put them away in the boxes he kept in the closet.

The biggest mystery, however, was one of those boxes. The one that Jisung had once told him not to open, that had not been touched since.

Minho was not an overly curious person. It did not bother him that there were things in the world he did not know, nor was it a difficulty for him to restrain himself from prying. Jisung deserved to have his secrets.

It was, then, a mystery Minho could live with. Much like the one of electricity.

So it was most definitely not his intention for it to happen when he finally uncovered that particular mystery.

He was meditating by the window, Jisung to his side on the living room floor with his laptop. His love was lying on his stomach, fingers tapping a beat against the palm rest, legs crossed in the air. Lost in thought.

Too beautiful to look at. Minho’s meditation was a show of restraint nowadays.

Then something flashed on the screen, the laptop started whirring, and all of a sudden the whole thing shut down. The screen went black. Jisung groaned.

“No, no, what? Are you kidding me?” He pressed the button to try and turn the thing on again, but to no avail. “It’s plugged in! What do you mean the battery’s empty?”

“What is it?” Minho asked, willing to help yet desperately aware of the limits to his own knowledge here.

“This piece of trash is acting up is what it is!” Jisung pressed the button again, multiple times, but nothing happened.

Minho did not mention that inanimate objects rarely did anything out of their own will, as lacking a will altogether mostly prevented that. Instead, he stood up. “Which part of it is not working?”

Jisung sighed, then gave him a pitiful look over his shoulder. “I think it’s the charger. Ah, Minho, I was in the middle of an important work thing!”

He was not. Minho had seen the screen over his shoulder and believed the Felix company did not pay Jisung for playing online card games.

He nodded. “I will get you the box with the spare ones.”

The pitiful, wide-eyed look on Jisung's face only intensified. “Minho! My saviour!”

Minho huffed at the theatrics, fondness flaring warm and pleasant in his chest. He stepped carefully over Jisung's laying body and headed to the bedroom.

The closet had not been neat when they’d first come here. Jisung had, thankfully, let Minho declutter it afterward, so now the boxes were all in a neat pile in their own places, only ever getting mixed up when Jisung went to put something back there in a rush.

Jisung was often careless about such things. Another surge of affection warmed Minho as he bent down to the lower shelf and picked up the box of spare cords. It was a little out of its place, clearly hastily thrown in.

“I can’t wait until we’re back in the cultivation world, honestly,” Jisung groaned, inspecting the charger still attached to the laptop with a sour face. “No laptops. No work. I can leech off of your vast wealth like I’m supposed to.”

He gave Jisung an amused look. He had started taking guqin students, so technically Jisung did not need to do the amount of work that he did here either.

“You do not want to quit working,” was his reply. “You would get restless.”

“I’m sure you would find a way to entertain me somehow,” Jisung said, the sad look turning mischievous in the blink of an eye. “Or are you not willing anymore? Has the relationship gone stale already? Is my nubile body no longer desirable to you, now that you had me every night for months?”

“Jisung,” Minho chastened mildly. The thought of him ever growing tired of Jisung was laughable.

He sat on the couch, placing the box in his lap. Jisung had turned to his side, stretching his legs out and holding his head against his hand. Minho refused to let his eyes linger on him – he knew what that would inevitably lead to, and he was still attempting to not take too many liberties.

They were not yet married. He’d been searching for a ring for a while now, ever since Hyunjin had explained to him the customs of this modern world. He found the idea of Jisung wearing his ring quite pleasing.

“That didn’t answer my question, Minho,” Jisung said, eyes narrowing in accusation. The underlying tease in them made Minho shake his head.

He would demonstrate his affection come night, should Jisung still be angling for it.

Minho opened the box, then, already focused on finding a matching charger to the one next to Jisung's laptop. But to his surprise, the box was not filled with black cords.

He did not recognize the objects inside. They were oblong, in different sizes and colours, ranging from a round blue cork-like thing to a bigger black item with slight bumps on it. And...handcuffs? These Minho could recognize, although they were padded with some sort of fur.

He stared for a moment, uncomprehending, until he saw it. In the colour of a peach, shaped like the thing it was clearly trying to imitate. Smaller than his own, most definitely, but still undeniably the same thing. He took it in his hand. The material was firm yet bendy.

Minho raised his gaze to Jisung, whose eyes had widened, mouth opened, and face turned that same colour as the fur in the handcuffs.

A confirmation, if anything. Minho’s grip on the object tightened almost by reflex.

“What—“

“Minho! Don’t touch that!” Jisung squeaked, trying to stumble up in haste, but Minho only straightened his leg over him, keeping him down.

“Jisung,” he said, lifting the object.

“What is this?”

The blush over Jisung's  cheeks deepened.

“You know what that is! Put it away, Minho, aiyo! Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”

“Why do you have this?” Minho asked, gaze dropping back down to the false member he was holding in his hand. Under it, in the box, the objects were starting to form meaning.

“I – ah -Minho! You know why! Put it down, it’s filthy!”

“Filthy,” Minho repeated, his belief in the situation confirmed.

Most of the time here, Minho did not miss having a golden core. Unlike what he’d expected, the feeling of being without one here was not something empty and aching, the feeling of a phantom limb. It wasn’t a presence of something that should’ve been there: rather, it felt like nothing at all, like there had never been a place for it inside of him anyway.

Currently, Minho wished for nothing more than to have his golden core – to be able to obliterate the offending item into dust. As per Jisung's wish, though, he let it drop back into the box.

“Minho–"

“You pleasure yourself with these?” Minho cut in, against the rules of his sect.
He might have gotten lost in the delight of seeing Jisung so flustered, had the topic at hand not been so critical. His love opened his mouth, half-starting a sentence many times yet not voicing anything.

Then, like giving up, his shoulders slumped and he whined, “Minho!”

“You said I was your first,” Minho said then, almost petulant. “Inside of you.” Jisung's  eyes widened further.

“Wha – that doesn’t count! It’s silicone, not a human being!”

It did not seem relevant. Minho had thought himself the first to make Jisung sweaty, blissed-out, mindless in this specific way, yet it seemed he had been beaten by an inanimate object. The disappointment of it burned.

The place Jisung came from truly wanted to strip him of every privilege, didn’t it?

“Did you make these?”

Another incredulous squeak. “Did I –? Did I make my own sex toys? I bought them!”

Minho felt the corner of his mouth curl down in displeasure. Of course. Everything and everyone here was shameless. Did it not make sense that the world that would demand they dress in only one layer would also sell them things like these?

A drop of vinegar to his tongue once again. What of the merchant that sold these to Jisung? He had known what they would be used for, surely. Had he imagined Jisung in throes of pleasure, writhing and moaning as he used one of these?

He despised this modern world for its lack of tolerance towards sword fighting as means of conflict resolution. Minho wanted to see that man take responsibility for his unrighteous motives.

“Who?” he asked.

“What?”

“Who sold these to you?”

Jisung squinted at him, then, but almost immediately his face relaxed back and he groaned.

“Minho! They are mass-produced! I’ve not been making any salacious dealings with some shady man in an alleyway! I bought them through the internet!”

This knowledge made Minho feel only barely less slighted. Mass-produced. These things were normal here. Part of life. It was Minho who yet again did not belong, whose mind could not bypass the obscenity of it.

He let his eyes scan the toys again. Another realisation sunk in. The box was hastily stuffed back into the closet as if taken out of it recently.

“Jisung has touched himself with these,” he stated.

“Wha – yes! We already established that!”

“Recently,” Minho clarified, and as his eyes landed back on Jisung, he witnessed the mortification on that face renew itself.

“I – well, I, uh, it’s – Minho! Won’t you stop looking at me like that?” He threw his hand out, pointing at Minho’s face.

“It’s like you’ve caught me cheating!”

“Have I not pleased you well enough?” he asked, the thought gnawing at him. Jisung, displeased with his performance, stole a moment away to touch himself in the way he wished, trusting the...silicone…rather than the man who was supposed to love him.

“What? What! Stop, whatever you’re thinking,” Jisung said immediately.

“You’re wrong and it’s stupid! I just – Minho, I just wanted to, ah, try it out, to– to compare, if it’s the same–"

“Did it?” Minho asked.

Jisung blinked. “Huh?”

“Did it compare?”

Another moment of spluttering. Minho did not know how Jisung could so drastically shift between complete shamelessness and embarrassment. He knew his own ears had been flaming from the moment he’d realised the meaning of the objects.

“Of course it didn’t! Obviously it didn’t!” Jisung insisted then. “Minho, I was just curious! You’re so much bigger!”

He glanced at the box. Jisung's assessment seems correct. Still, the sourness in him did not subside.

“And if you…” He squinted at the peach-coloured one, the largest of the toys. “...bought yourself a bigger one?”

“That’s not what I meant!” Jisung rushed to say. “You think I could replace you with a toy? Minho, give me some credit!”

“When?” Minho asked next, still unable to let go.

“When what? When did I, ah, do the comparison?” Jisung rubbed his neck, avoiding his gaze. “Haha, it was, um, it was a few weeks ago? You went to the store during rush hour. I knew it’d take at least forty minutes for you to come back.”

“Which one did you use?”

“What is this, an interrogation, ah? Can’t a man have his secrets?” Jisung asked, resorting to dramatics. Though when he glanced at Minho again, he continued with a sigh; “The one you held just then.”

It rested there, on top of the toys, mocking him. Minho despised it. “How did it feel?”

“Wh – Minho! When have you become this shameless?”

Minho gave him a look, and Jisung's blush spread. “It – well, it was – it just – the thing is, I, it wasn’t – enough?”

“Enough?”

“Well, I was obviously thinking about you when I did that, and you’re much more, you know, intense,” he explained, the words coming out almost in one breath. “It’s not the same, Minho, so you shouldn’t worry about it!”

“I see,” Minho said. He closed the box then. Placed it on the couch next to him. “You still kept them.”

“They’re expensive,” Jisung defended. “I definitely wouldn’t get rid of them just because they can’t reach the impossible standard you have set!”

“You are planning to use them again, then?”

“I – uh, well.” There was a moment Jisung looked like he might escape the room. He seemed to abandon the idea just as quickly. “Yes? Look, what will I do the next time you’re gone?”

“For forty minutes?”

“No! But – Minho, there will absolutely be a time in the future where we’re not together for a few days, and what if I really miss you, and I need to, ah, I need to make myself miss you a little less, so I –"

“Touch yourself with something that is not enough?” Minho asked, dry.

“Minho!” Jisung said. Then, “...Yes?”

“I will not leave,” he stated resolutely.
Jisung would never have to miss him, then, and to use those despicable pieces of silicone in replacement of what he needed.

He did not seem impressed with Minho’s declaration, though, as he rubbed his hands over his face, muffling something into his palms. Then he sighed loudly, dramatically, and gave Minho a look.

“No, Minho, let’s be realistic. You will not stay next to me every day for the rest of our lives just because you are jealous of some stupid dildos.”

Minho exhaled. Some part of him realised he was being petty and intolerant, exhibiting the worst parts of his own personality over a thing that must have been, to Jisung, incredibly minor. Jisung did not view sexuality and its different expressions in the same way as him.

Perhaps Minho should have guessed this. Jisunghad always been more knowledgeable than him when it came to matters like these.

Once again, Minho felt out of his element. Unsure of how to proceed without giving offence, unsure of how to not be offended.

“Oh, stop looking so miserable,” Jisung said, standing up then, and promptly landing himself in Minho’s lap, facing him, thighs to either side of his own. “What do you think you’re doing, getting so worked up over such a small thing? Don’t tell me you have never jerked one off back in the Geumgangsan?”

Minho could not lie, so he merely circled his arms around Jisung's  waist and pulled him closer.

“See? You totally have. So how’s it any different when I use toys while doing it?” He flicked Minho’s nose with a finger, and Minho caught his hand on his own.

“Jisung,” he sighed.

“What, now he doesn’t have anything to say to defend himself? Typical! You’re not even thinking far enough to get fun about it.”

“Fun?”

A wide smile spread on that beloved face slowly. “Who says I only have to use them alone, huh? I have all kinds of neat stuff in that box, Minho. You could make me lose my mind with them.”

Minho glanced at the box, doubt most likely evident on his face. Jisung snorted.

“Fine, fine. You’ll come around to it,” he said. “The vibrating ones are nice. And if it’s just the dildo thing bothering you, we can order some stuff together too!”

“Jisung.”

His laughter was still the sweetest sound in the world, even when the cause was Minho’s exasperation. Jisung slid his hands over Minho’s shoulders, to his neck and the side of his face.

“Stop looking at me so disapprovingly, Hyung. You knew what you got into when I first stumbled into your world with those tiny shorts.”

“Mn.” He did. This too was a continuation of the inevitable realisations that came with falling in love with someone from a different world.

Minho sighed silently, letting his forehead fall against Jisung's shoulder, the man’s hands falling easily off his face and to his hair.

Another difference in propriety. Minho had been through this multiple times now, first with the clothing, then with the attitude towards premarital sex. Was this not only another way Jisung's mind was heedless of conventionality?

Jisung was good. In so many ways. And the things Jisung did and believed were, while not always wise nor healthy for himself, not morally objectionable.

Minho sighed again. He still hated the box and its fillings.

“Also, I refuse to believe there aren't any kind of old-timey dildos in the cultivation world,” Jisung added. “You’re just being very Lee about it.”

Despite himself, Minho felt a flash of amusement. “Hm?”

“Yes, very proper and prudish,” Jisung stated. “You know, I bet there’s a fisherman in Geumgangsan who has carved one out of jade for his wife as a gift!”

A wealthy fisherman, to be able to give his wife a piece of jade that big. Minho did not say this, only took Jisung by the hips and squeezed. The man squirmed against him.

“A thoughtless gift.” He rubbed his thumbs against Jisung's hip bones. “Not enough.”

“...Are you going to be a caveman about this?” Jisung asked nonsensically, then immediately clarified, a grin in his voice; “I mean, go all primal on me. Show me what I’m missing when I misbehave and use toys instead of the real deal.”

“Is that what Jisung wants?” Minho asked, moving his head so that his lips were against the soft skin of Jisung's  throat.

He felt it move under him, swallow. “Ha, well, if you happened to be like that, there’s not much I could do, right?”

“Mn,” Minho agreed. “Right.”

He placed a kiss against that skin, then, pulling Jisung tighter to himself. The pants Jisung was wearing were loose, stretchy material – sweatpants, he called them, though Minho had yet to see Jisung sweating in them.

Some day, perhaps.

Minho held Jisung close to himself with one hand while sliding the other one between them, pressing it against what was clearly a growing hardness under the soft cotton. Jisung bucked immediately against him, impatient as always. Or perhaps trying to goad Minho further.

Like that was ever needed. Was it not the primal that Jisung wanted? That Minho could provide for him. He lifted Jisung up by the hips – the show of strength was always met with an exaggerated amount of gasping as if Jisung had forgotten from the last time he lifted him.
_________

With only two more chapters, I extend it to 50 chapters. Gonna miss you guys, let's meet until the next book. :')